We’re reading…”Hold on tight, Stripy Horse” and “Monster Day at Work”
Stripy Horse returns for another adventure inside the bric a brac shop, when the magic picture on the wall starts to rain, creating a river that threatens to wash Stripy Horse and his friends away. Stripy Horse is joined by a flamingo umbrella, some pepperpot penguins and a parrot weathervane in this (slightly random) tale of friends helping each other to save the day.
The Stripy Horse stories are winners of the Sheffield Children’s Book Award, which asks Sheffield’s schoolchildren to vote for their favourite book, so this one has crowd- pleasing pedigree. The artwork is beautiful, with gorgeous colours and the pages in my paperback edition have a pleasing matt finish. I was puzzled by this book however; I didn’t find the characters or the story engaging, and felt that the relatively simple story was overburdened by too much text, much of it in complex language. In particular I was irritated by the parrot who spoke only in clichés, which go straight over a young child’s head. Overall, I felt its main aim was to be cute rather than interesting. When reading this with the two year old, I had to hurry through or edit the text before he pulled the next page over. My 6 year old said it was good because he liked fantasy stories. But, the book has not been pulled out to be re-read since the first couple of readings. See what your young readers think.
“Monster Day at Work”, published last month, was a book we found by chance in my local library. Its a look through a child’s eyes at a parent’s day at work. The young monster accompanies his dad to work; picking out his tie, eating biscuits in meetings, playing on the computer and going to the canteen for lunch, and then wonders why Daddy complains about going to work. It’s written with simple text and mischievous humour, prompting chat about what Daddy (or Mummy) might be up to when at work. Illustrated with quirky and appealing characters, it was a book that all of us enjoyed reading. Author Sarah Dyer has also written other award winning stories including Five Little Fiends, which won the Smarties Book Prize in 2001.
Hold on Tight Stripy Horse by Jim Helmore and Karen Wall, published by Egmont Press, March 2010
Monster Day at Work by Sarah Dyer, published by Frances Lincoln, February 2010
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